Incorporating Certainty and Attribute Non-attendance in Choice Experiments: An Application to Valuation of Coastal Habitat

Because of their nonmarket characteristics, coastal habitats are often valued using stated preference methods. An extensive literature cautions the confounding influence of both choice complexity and hypothetical bias in these types of analyses. In response, researchers have developed a variety of ex post controls to reduce the influence of potential biases. This study utilizes a discrete choice experiment with the goal of measuring users’ willingness to pay for estuarine habitat and access in the Sarasota Bay estuary. Our application examines model calibration to address (1) reported choice certainty and (2) stated attribute non-attendance. Our results indicate that accounting for attribute non-attendance and choice certainty has minor effects on coefficient estimates, generally leading to small changes in the marginal utilities for coastal habitat and income. The more apparent influence of these approaches comes via smaller standard errors, suggesting that ex post methods may ameliorate hypothetical bias and provide more precise estimates.